Leaving Home
by frogginator
Summary: Regulus' POV: The night Sirius leaves home for good, Regulus confronts him in one last plea for him to be the brother he always wanted.


Author's Note: I haven't written fanfiction in over a year, though I've been roleplaying. In fact, the first part of this was written as a starting bit in a roleplay, and I just felt it was strong enough to start out it's own piece of writing. My apologies to Sirius-mun (Anita, halogirl) if the Sirius in this bit of writing comes a bit too close to hers, I attempted to make him more my own, but there are just some things that are plain and simple _Sirius_, no matter what.

Hope you enjoy reading!

* * *

_Summer, 1976_

It had been one hell of a row, the house ringing with shouting and screaming and the sound of blows, of things being thrown. There were some sounds Regulus didn't even recognize, and, deep down somewhere, that frightened him. He wondered for a while if the night would end with his older brother dead. He wondered if Sirius would become a ghost, or pass on into the next world in peace. He wondered which option he'd pick for Sirius if he had the choice. It wasn't an easy night.

He'd started off trying to ignore the fight by painting. He'd spent 10 minutes selecting the loose black trousers and long black tunic he was currently wearing, mulling over the pros and cons of each garment, of how much he would miss it were he to cover it in paint, uncomfortable with putting on things he no longer fit into because of his too-short spurt of adolescent growth, ears locked all the while on the brewing argument below, the voices raising from calm discussion to ardent discussion.

After changing into the clothing he'd selected, Regulus took his time setting up the canvas for use, expertly stretching the fabric over the frame, setting it up on his easel, preparing paint thinner and water, running delicate fingers over the little jars of oil paint and deciding what colors he wanted to put on the canvas, what he wanted to paint. After selecting them, he very methodically dabbed the paints onto a palette and selected his thinnest brush. No undersketching this time, it was to be pure emotion. The voices downstairs morphed from discussion to argument, raised voices turning into shouts as Regulus put the first strokes onto the canvas. They were red. He didn't remember selecting a color.

It wasn't losing a brother, he reminded himself as he deepened the red, adding black, taking away the fire as much as he could, taking the intensity of pain out of it, it wasn't losing a brother because he'd never had one. Even those few years as a child that he'd idolized the boy down there who shared his blood, even then he hadn't had a brother, it was all just a ruse, a game he played with his own mind because he was small and didn't know better. It wasn't losing a brother, it was just his family correcting itself, balancing things out, buoying to the surface and surviving like Blacks always did. They were strong, and all they were doing was ejecting a weak-minded parasite on their resources. It was only right.

But still, it was Sirius who was doing the leaving.

Regulus couldn't paint anymore. It had turned into an overwhelming swirl of black, there was no distinguishable form, the streaks of red here and there didn't serve to make it more aesthetically pleasing, and the composition was atrocious. It was a waste of paint and a waste of a canvas. There was screaming downstairs and Regulus took the edge of the canvas in his slender little hands and threw it hard to the side, knocking over the easel, upending the palette onto the floor, sending paint thinner onto the carpet. It was no matter, the house elves would clean it up, and the noise was important, the sound of it had to drown out the screaming and shouting and throwing.

It wasn't losing a brother. It wasn't. He wasn't losing a brother. He was taking his rightful place as the heir of the family. It wasn't a loss, it was a strategic move that he didn't even have to manipulate for himself. So easy. So so easy.

He kicked the easel.

There were footsteps coming up the stairs, and he heard Sirius going into his room. Heard the sound of Sirius tossing things into his suitcases while Regulus himself paced back and forth through the mess of paints and thinner he'd left on the floor of his room. Sirius' door slammed shut again, and before he knew what was happening, Regulus was out the door and blocking the hallway back downstairs. The door to his older brother's room opened, and Regulus locked his pale blue eyes on it.

"Sirius." he said, and his voice was dead.

Sirius was a year older and a head taller, his black hair falling in a thick sheaf across his forehead in a carelessly attractive way even now that his nose dribbled blood over the full lips and his right eye was already swelling. It would be an impressive shiner, and Regulus wondered whether Sirius had gotten it from their father's own hand or from a piece of furniture, or from something else entirely. But Sirius had always had that careless, easy way of always looking his best, even when he was at his worst – there may not have been anyone in the world who knew that better than Regulus…Regulus had seen him at his worst a lot.

"Go back to your room, Reg." Sirius said, his voice stern, and with just a hint of leftover anger from the fight. But his voice was softer than when he talked to their parents, and Regulus tried hard to suppress the little pang of triumph and happiness in the pit of his gut. He was supposed to be angry at his older brother, supposed to be ready to blast his name from the tapestry, to evict him from their lives – but the pang was there and there was no denying it, even if Regulus wanted to.

No. He had to deny it. He was going to be the Heir of the Black Family, now that this had happened. Sirius had gone away before, but there was no question that this was final. The suitcase on the floor by Sirius' feet was evidence of such. This was a rift that couldn't be fixed.

Regulus drew himself to his full height which, admittedly, wasn't all that impressive. Sirius had gotten all the formidable height and build that their family's genes seemed able to offer, and Regulus felt, despite his defiant stance, that he was still just a child. The loose clothing he wore, his bare feet, his thin shoulders and delicate hands – even clenched into fists, they looked delicate, an artist's hands, no good for fighting – all made him feel like he was still just a little boy trying desperately to fit into his big brother's shoes. But still, he tried.

Pushing a strand of his fine brown hair away from his pale blue eyes, he met Sirius' gaze, "Why should I listen to anything you have to say, Sirius?" he demanded, "You haven't got the right to tell me what to do anymore."

"Go back to your fucking room!" Sirius hissed, his dark grey eyes seeming to swirl like a storm. For a moment, Regulus felt like he was lost in the gaze…the penetrating stare that seemed to pierce through him and remind him that everything he was from size to looks and coloring to personality was merely a pale ghost of what Sirius was. Sirius was the one breaking free.

'_It's not breaking free. It's abandonment. It's unforgivable.'_ Regulus reminded himself, and took in a breath.

"No." he said, "I want to know why." He carefully unclenched his fists and smoothed them down his thighs, wiping off a thin layer of moisture that had gathered from stress and heat onto his dark clothing, then lifted his chin and pressed his full lips together.

"Why? You want to know why?" Sirius said, his voice rising a bit, but not enough to get the attention of either of their parents, who were downstairs arguing with each other now, voices rising in a counterpoint to the intensity of the quieter conversation that their sons were having upstairs, "As if I haven't made that obvious ever since I got sorted into Gryffindor! As if I haven't told you a thousand times, _little brother_," the words came out derisive, and Regulus flinched just slightly, "why I need out. And why you need to get out."

"You're not getting out! You make it sound as if our life is so _difficult_. As if mother and father wouldn't have been willing to give you everything you needed or wanted if you weren't so damn difficult. As if you didn't have a loving, supportive family who would have taken care of you if you were only the…the son you should have been. The _brother_ you should have been." he hissed back, eyes flashing. Regulus was attractive and intense in his own way, though it may not have been quite as flashy as Sirius, and he did know how to use it occasionally, when he was impassioned enough. And this impassioned him.

"Oh, that's rich! Come off it, Regulus." Sirius said, moving around him and closer to him, his face closing in to Regulus' own. Regulus couldn't help how he drew back. With the blood and bruises on his face, with his eyes storming like that, Sirius was intimidating, frightening even, "You know damn well that I'm doing the right thing. You know it. You're not stupid, even if you act that way sometimes, you know that this…" he waved a hand, "…this course of action, this killing and prejudice…is wrong. You know it, Reg."

"No. What's wrong is that you're abandoning us." Regulus said, voice dead again, "You're leaving. You're abandoning your family. You're abandoning _me_." It was a tentative plea for his brother to make some other decision, to put Regulus before himself, a last plea for the love he'd always craved deep down, for his brother to just…approve of him.

"This isn't about you. Grow up and look at the bigger picture, you little prat. You spoiled little prince. Get out while you've still got a chance to." Sirius said, voice cold as ice, "I'm leaving now." He picked up his suitcase and walked around Regulus, the younger boy swiveling to watch him go.

"Sirius!" he called, one last time, "Don't go."

Sirius didn't respond.

The suitcase thudded down the stairs and across the entryway. His parents' shouts were the only things left to chase the boy out the front door and down the street. Regulus stood on the landing for a long while, shoulders slumped inside his oversized tunic and trousers, hands limp, hair in his face. After a long while spent staring at the front door, he parted his lips and licked them, then pressed them together, and brought a hand up to his temple, running fingertips through his hair. Then he dropped it at his side, and picked at the drying paint on his shirt.

"Idiot." he muttered, and, realizing that his legs would work now, he walked back to his room, a slow, unfocussed movement that was quite unlike his usual walk. He dug around in his bag for his pack of cigarettes and, after securing the carton, which was nearly empty, walked slowly down the stairs, ducking the living room and going out the back door. He refused to follow his brother's footsteps through the house and out the front door.

Standing on the rear stoop, he fumbled a cigarette from the pack and tucked it between his lips, where it quivered, and it wasn't until after it took him a full minute to light the cigarette that he realized his hands were shaking. Taking a deep drag of the menthol tobacco, he melted back against the house, eyes half-shut.

"I wonder if mum will let me use his room as a study." he said to himself.

When he finished his cigarette, and his hands had stopped shaking from anything other than the slight dizziness that inhaling a whole fag with that speed and intensity on an empty stomach left him, Regulus turned and moved inside the house. The shouting had abated, and all the sound left was the wailing of his mother and short, clipped sentences from his father that masqueraded as attempts to comfort her. Regulus didn't look into the sitting room, he didn't want to see the carnage there. Instead, he started up the steps and went into his room, just like Sirius had told him to, and closed the door behind him. The easel and paints were still on the floor, but he simply stepped over them as he headed to his closet, from which he removed black trousers, a black jumper, black socks, and his robes. Changing quickly, he tossed his paint-damaged lounge clothes onto the mess made by his earlier temper tantrum, and stalked out of his room.

"Mum, Dad, I'm going to Avery's." he said as softly as he could, mostly to cover his own rear when they thought he'd left without telling them, and, after lacing his boots up, he went into the kitchen to use the fire there.

All it took for Regulus to escape was a handful of Floo powder and two carefully-spoken words. No violence, no screaming, no turning his back on everything he'd been raised with. Just a handful of powder and six syllables.

"Avery Residence."

* * *

Regulus had to be careful not to kick his feet as he sat on Avery's bed, it was a childish gesture and it probably wouldn't impress the older boy, who was sitting slouched in an armchair across the room from him, legs spread lazily, lighting matches and watching them as they burned down to his fingers, then tossing the burnt ends of wood at Regulus across the room. 

"And he left. Just like that." Regulus said with a wave of his slender hand, "Like he was all smart, like he was doing the right thing. So incredibly, infuriatingly self-righteous, the prick, and told me to get out while I still can."

Avery snorted, rolling grey eyes that didn't quite have the same storm to them that Sirius' did, and flicking a charred piece of wood at Regulus, who knocked it out of the air with another wave of his hand. Avery paused in his incessant match-burning to push a few strands of his long brown hair behind an ear, and then proceeded to rip out a new match, flicking it with his nail to make it ignite, and locking his eyes on the flame while he continued the conversation with Regulus.

"Sirius always was a pretty worthless piece of shite." he said, and the flame had finished licking up the sulfur at the end of the match. It was eating the wood away.

"Right." Regulus replied, "I can't believe I ever admired him."

Avery snorted again. The flame was only a scant quarter of an inch from his fingertips, but it didn't phase him. Avery had always loved fire.

"You haven't admired him since you were in nappies, Reg, so move on. It's not like it's a loss, right? He's always been shite as a brother anyway. Besides, you've got me, right?" Avery said, letting the fire burn out on his fingertips and preparing to flick this new piece of charred wood at the delicate 14-year-old perched on the edge of his four-poster bed.

Avery was a year older, just like Sirius, and he and Regulus had been friends since Regulus' second year, when some Hufflepuff was bullying him and Avery had told him to step off. Avery was just like the older brother Regulus had always wished Sirius was. Regulus would do almost anything for Avery, including tolerate the boy throwing chunks of charred matches at him.

"Right…" he said, and the cold hollow spot inside seemed to be filling up. The latest charred matchstick hit him in the nose, and he rubbed at it, "Oiy, Avery, step off!" he said, with a grin. Avery raised a brow at him, and climbed out of the chair to stomp across the room, grinning in return. Regulus emitted a little squeak as Avery jumped on top of him and within moments the two were in the midst of a heated playfight on the king-sized bed, laughing and pushing and kicking. Sirius never playfought with Regulus.

After a while of tussling, the two boys lay on their backs on the bed, catching their breath and getting out the last of the laughing fit, Regulus cradling his wrist and wincing between laughs, "You jerk, you hurt my wrist."

"S'yer own damn fault." Avery retorted, "Besides, you gave me a pretty good crack on the nose, you little prat."

Regulus laughed, the first real laugh he'd had in days, and shook his head, "We're even then." he said, with a little smile, through mussed hair that hung all in his face. Avery reached over and delicately brushed the strands aside. Sirius never pushed Regulus' hair out of his face like that, as if he cared.

"Yup." Avery said, withdrawing his hand.

"What now?" Regulus asked, leaning his chin in the palm of his hand, braced against the mattress with his elbow.

Avery shrugged, "I dunno." he said, then glanced over at Regulus again, "Have you heard the rumors? About the Dark Lord rising, gaining power…I hear a few of the Slytherins who've left school are working for him now. Think he'll wipe out the Mudblood infestation and fix the Muggle problem once and for all?"

"Hopefully." Regulus said, airily, "That would certainly make my parents happy." He gave in, and kicked his feet, which were still hanging over the edge of the bed.

"We should join up." Avery said off-handedly, "Once we leave school. Bet yer mum and dad would be proud of you, and forget they ever had an older son."

Regulus' eyes widened, and he looked over at Avery, "You're right! That's brilliant…I'm sure mum and dad would be really proud of me then…"

Sirius never suggested ways that Regulus could make his parents proud or uphold the family name.

"Yup yup." Avery agreed, non-chalantly.

"That settles it." Regulus said, smiling his sweet, beautiful smile at Avery's ceiling. He was going to be a follower of the Dark Lord, and he was going to forget Sirius ever existed. He had a cause now, and Avery was right – Sirius was shite as a brother, Avery was much better and…who needed Sirius, when he had that?


End file.
